Pirate Party membership plummets post Pirate Bay verdict

Pirate Party membership has dropped 50 percent in the year following The …

Membership in the Swedish Piratpartiet, or Pirate Party, has sunk to half its high of roughly 50,000 members in the year since the cofounders of BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay were found guilty of guilty of assisting copyright infringement. Membership has languished to roughly 25,000 registered members according to The Register, despite gaining official recognition in Sweden, Germany, and Canada. Though anti-Big Content sentiment hasn't universally subsided, it may be hard for the Pirate Party to sustain its initial political support.

Membership surged last spring after the operators of The Pirate Bay were handed a guilty verdict by Swedish district court. "By providing a site with, as the district court found, sophisticated search functions, easy upload and storage, and a website linked to the tracker," the defendants were guilty of assisting copyright infringement, the court said.

However, despite the Pirate Party's best efforts to transform outrage into a sustained political movement, membership has dropped sharply. Recent polls have shown that interest among voters has dropped sharply as well, putting the Pirate Party together with other marginal parties that total just 1.6 percent of voter support. Recent increases in legitimate sources for copyright media such as music, movies, and TV shows may also be a factor in tempering some of the interest in the Pirate Party.